Library Weblog & News

Original and subversively funny - Friends of the Library book discussion

2008-02-26 13:31:44

Thursday, March 27, 20083:00 p.m. - 4:30 p.m. 2121 Euclid AvenueRhodes Tower, room 503 (in the CSU Library)Free and open to the communitySponsored by the Friends of the Library

Richard Fox, Head of the Popular Library at Cleveland Public Library, is back by popular demand to lead a Friends of the Library book discussion on a briskly original and subversively funny novella, The Uncommon Reader, by popular British writer Alan Bennett.

When Queen Elizabeth II in pursuit of her runaway puppy stumbles upon a mobile library, she feels duty bound to borrow a book. Aided by Norman, a young man from the palace kitchen who frequents the library, Bennett describes the Queen's transformation as she discovers the liberating pleasures of the written word. With the dawn of her sensibility, mistaken for the onset of senility, plots are hatched by the prime minister and the queen's staff to dispatch Norman and discourage the queen's preoccupation with books. Ultimately, it is her own growing self-awareness that leads her away from reading toward writing, with astonishing results. Bennett has fun with the proper behavior and protocol at the palace, and the few instances of mild coarseness seem almost scandalous.